For the last few years, I have been a very enthusiastic Blackberry user. Instant email and the strong end-to-end encryption of peer services, together with the rather brilliant keyboard, made it always my device of choice. RIM, had been falling behind horribly on the software quality of all other functions. The browser has been a piece of crap, the touch devices were so-so, and they seem to have trouble making choices. Yes they make a pad (yawn), but it only works in combination with a phone. Yes they have touch, but also a slide out keyboard. Still. I like my curve. The final straw that is breaking the camels back is NOT the frustrating 3 days outage this month, even if it didn’t help. What is is RIM now choosing Microsoft for it’s cloud services. So. I will “sit out” my contract, and then it will be goodbye and so long, my faithful little blackberry; you have served me well and thank you for that. I will switch to Android in a couple of months.

OK, I do know an owl is NOT a ptarmigan. Still…. David send me this insane timelapsed owl landing video. How is that for a “dynamic aerofoil” GG? I couldn’t help hearing rubber screeching on asphalt. Not embeddable but here is a link to the mp4 and the poster.

I reinstalled (now under Ubuntu) a program to donate my spare CPU cycles to the World Community Grid. Right now it is chewing away on a 9 hour workload for the Human Proteome Folding project, after which it will start working on HelpConquer Cancer and FightAids. Assuming I am not in reality decrypting encrypted traffic for the CIA, I think it is a great plan to donate more or less wasted computer cycles to computer hungry research projects in the “Humanity” category. Yes I also donated to SETI long ago. Anyone to join in a “Ptarmigan” team? I will set one up if there are 4 participants.

The little girl woke up and had lost all nerve connections to her back half. Her legs didn’t work, and her fluffy tail just flopped. Bravely she tried to get upstairs in the morning pulling herself with just her front legs.

But it wasn’t meant to be, and Zoey went to visit Cruiser and take a ride on Maxx’s comet about 10am.

The little kitty that had it so hard early in life never let any of that past bother her. She was always purring and chirping as some kitties do. She was good at it too, you always knew when she was happy, which was just about always.